Changes to data maintained in a distributed database system may be represented by a collection of log files. Each shard of the distributed database may maintain its own log file representing changes to the data maintained by that particular shard. A typical distributed database may contain a large number of shards and may process a high volume of requests to change data. Consequently, the collection of log files may grow to be quite large.
As with other types of database systems, there are typically a number of reasons to create backups of these log files. A backup could, for example, be used to restore the distributed database to a prior state in the event of a system failure. A backup might also be used to duplicate an existing database, or to transfer the data maintained in one distributed database to another system. However, due to the number and size of the log files in a typical distributed database system, the process of creating an archive may take a considerable length of time.